A healthy world, a good life

Sustainability is only
a behavioural change away.

Our
playing field

In all fields of life and work:
Sustainable behaviour brings real progress.

Talk
to us

Sustainable behaviour is a challenge you want to address more actively in your organisation or your environment.
You are faced with changes in the field of sustainability and are looking for an efficient and innovative approach.

Ourrecipe

Make sustainable behaviour attractive –
for society, business and politics.

More than a homo oeconomicus:
Humans act humanly.

People do not always decide rationally or to optimise their benefit. The majority of our decisions are taken automatically and our heart decides differently than our gut or our mind. And often we say one thing but do the other. We at Tsuku change behaviour by addressing the real behavioural drivers.

More than the sum of its parts:
Humans act socially.

Standard interventions treat people as isolated individuals even though human behaviour is fundamentally social: social norms and identity determine what is appropriate when and where and social fairness is much more important than absolute property levels. With social mechanisms we not only change individual behaviour but the behaviour of whole communities.

Winning hearts instead of obedience:
Cooperation as Plan A.

People respond differently to different behavioural interventions: with a cooperative, transactional or negative reciprocal mindset. Cooperative behaviour change is very effective but also fragile: once destroyed, it can only be restored with high costs. With fair rules, the right incentives and credible feedback and sanctioning mechanisms, we build the basis for sustainable cooperation.

Instead of using a sledgehammer to crack the nut:
Make behaviour change easy.

Interventions aimed at changing behaviour are often inefficient or encroach on people‘s freedom. The real levers often lie in the change process itself: system 1, biases, initial costs, fairness violations and lacking will power prevent behaviour changes from the start. We identify where and when a gentle nudge or a helping hand is the only thing needed – simple and voluntary.

Which behavioural intervention?
Complementarity and experiments as the keys to success.

Incentives, regulations, nudging, feedback and target mechanisms, transfer of expertise or choice and story architecture – there is no single best tool to motivate sustainable behaviour. Systematic testing is imperative as the devil is in the detail. We pay close attention to context and design an individualised mix of interventions.

Imagination defines the possible:
Telling a new story.

Stories shape our experience and our perception of what is possible and desirable. The dominant narrative disguises that an entirely different reality is just as conceivable. We change perspectives through story architecture and more meaningful success indicators: the impossible does not only become possible that way, but even logical, trivial and attractive.

Talk
with us

Your goal is to motivate sustainable behaviour and you want to learn about the strongest levers, the most effective interventions and the no-gos.
You expect reluctance or resistance, actual behaviour does not match your expectations or cooperation is not working.

Tsuku

The path to sustainability is paved by behavioural changes.

Gabi Hildesheimer: the ecologist

Work background Biologist, former director of Öbu (Swiss Association for Sustainable Business), company and college board member, initiator of innumerable projects in the field of sustainability in Switzerland and internationally.

My role at Tsuku Expertise in sustainable behaviour in various fields; cooperation with partners from business, academia and politics.

Something personal I like to challenge my knowledge, to find common ground and gaps between diffe- rent realms of experience and to fill them with new ideas for a better world. Being able to then test and apply these ideas is especially wonderful.

Contact: gabi@tsuku.ch

Moritz Jäger: the behavioural economist

Work background
Business psychologist, behavioural economics consultant in business and politics on (among others) the topics of consumer, mobility, health and investment behaviour, leadership, digitalisation and cooperative policy making.

My role at Tsuku
Behavioural science concepts, methods and implementation; interface between science and practice.

Something personal
I am a passionate piano player and surfer and enjoy trying my hand at visual design. I like exciting
debates on long walks and in cozy cafes.

Contact: moritz@tsuku.ch

Tsuku‘s story

Tsuku means owl (and a few other things). How the company from Zurich got its name is in equal parts coincidence, misunderstandings and good fortune. If you are interested in hearing the whole story – we enjoy telling it in person.

Our network

Tsuku relies on a broad network in business, politics, arts and science (among others: University of Zurich, ETH Zurich, ZHAW, ZHdK). We are open for partnership with people and institutions who share our goals and are excited about cooperative and creative collaboration.

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to us

Sustainability or human behaviour is your passion, too, and you are interested in an exchange.
You could imagine cooperating with us and want to find out more about how we work.

Our vision

A healthy world, a good life

A healthy world

Successful business and a functioning society are not possible without a healthy environment. We require clean air and water, intact forests and a colourful, great variety of species. So far, economic growth has been accompanied by the destruction of precisely these foundations. Important parts of our natural capital are already gone today. The world regions that have contributed least to the overuse are affected first.

Such a system cannot survive in the long run. Humans should only live off „interest“, of what grows back and is renewable. In all likelihood, this will not be achievable through efficiency increase and substitution of toxic substances alone. Waiting for a technology that solves all problems is risky. Behavioural change is the foundation of the path towards sustainability.

A good life

Humans strive towards monetary, social or psychological gains, sometimes fairly rationally and sometimes not at all: the basics of human behaviour don‘t change. With conditions changing rapidly, however, actual human behaviour does, too. Wealth and health, technology, globalisation and cheap transport provide people in our latitudes with more options than ever. The abundance of possibilities has not answered fundamental human questions however: questions about identity, fairness and equality, about the fast pace of life, about autonomy and independence have become more complex than ever.

Faced with this tension, society, businesses and politics have to ask the question: what is a good life? And which good life can still be lived by our grandchildren?

A healthy world, a good life

We are convinced: the question of what constitutes a healthy world is inseparably linked with the question of what a good life is. Only in a healthy world is a good life even possible. At the same time, people will only change their behaviour if it also leads to personal gain. Findings from the behavioural sciences tell us: this is possible. Sustainable behaviour brings people autonomy, competence, identity and a better relati- onship to objects, space, other people and their own actions. Simply put: a good life. It makes people resilient, engaged and autonomous citizens and consumers, our businesses more competitive, their fields more meaningful and our politics forward-looking.

Our goal is to design our spatial, social, economical and political structures as well as our stories in such a way that sustainable behaviour increases quality of life. We humans – especially in the Western world – are lucky: we now have the necessary knowledge about human behaviour, the technological requirements and the means at hand to tackle these challenges.

Talk
to us

You share our vision, are sceptical or have ideas that could help us.
You see common ground between your and our goals and would like to find out how we can support each other.

Talkto us

We develop our solutions cooperatively and tailor-made
for your situation.

How can Tsuku help me?

From sustainability in businesses, in private and public space to policy design – if it is related to sustainable behaviour, we can help. We work with various methods on three levels: strategy and concepts, behavioural analy- sis and measurement, intervention design and experiments in a real-world setting. We develop the most promising approach based on your situation, your needs and resources. If you would like to know how we would address your challenge, you have two options at your disposal.

Send us three keywords about your request. We will think about your needs and find the appropriate solution together.

Meet us for an informal coffee and explore ideas and possibilities for a collaboration with us in person.